My Cougar Mech
 

So people...this is my first seroius project in lightwave...I'm trying to make a cougar mech from mechwarrior game series...
I started with some pictures from the net, I came this far.
This is first frame from a short (and bad) anim of my cougie walking, so you can see what i'm takling about.
Of course, I'm gonna give this mech some arms and texturing, but my final goal is to animate it: walking, strafing, turning aroud his "hips", moving arms...quite a longshot but I think it's the only way to learn...
Any comments or directions to a good-and-simple-for-a-beginner-to-understand bone animation tutorial for a humanoid robot are more than welcome....I dunno how to animate it without the bending that occurs at joints when lw tries to simualte "organic" joints...I want mechanical ones... :rolleyes:

In order to get the parts to move as if they're separate, then they need to be modelled separately (ie: on different layers). Take a look at the demo scenes supplied with Lightwave, specifically:

MechStand.lws, MechWalk.lws, MechWalker_wFog.lws and ScoutWalker.lws

Pick them and the associated models apart, and you'll see how it should be done.

BTW: Your cougar is looking good there so far. Keep it up.

you also may wanna read up on applying weight maps (helps you to control where you want the bone to affect the object) and using inverse kindematics for animating the walk